The movie and video game industries are quickly becoming best friends. When a blockbuster game is released, movie talks almost instantly begin. Similarly, every big budget movie seems to hit the theaters simultaneously with its video game counterparts. The cooperation between these two forms of media often translates well into sales, but the resulting crossover products havent always been stellar. Thankfully, WALL-E for the Wii manages to maintain much of the films appeal, while providing an adequate gameplay experience for fans of the movie.

The game, like the movie, focuses on a curious and quirky robot named WALL-E, who is tasked with cleaning up the trash heap that is futuristic Earth. While tidying the planet, WALL-E runs into a much more advanced robot named EVE and the two quickly become friends. Working together, they must protect the worlds final remaining plant in an effort to make Earth habitable for humans once more. Why a robot who has spent his entire life cleaning up peoples garbage would want to invite these litterbugs back with open arms is still a mystery to me, but WALL-E does manage to mask an important message beneath its deceptively cutesy exterior.

The quest to save the planet unfolds in nine levels, taking place on Earth and beyond. Players will control WALL-E, EVE, or a combination of the two. WALL-E levels have a good mix of platforming, collecting, and simplistic puzzle solving elements throughout. As a cleanup droid, WALL-E has the ability to produce four different kinds of trash cubes, each with their own unique properties and uses. As an example, heavy cubes are good for weighing down switches, while magnet cubes are great at repelling objects and enemies. Cubes can be created from random piles of debris or collected from functioning BnL vending stations. Unfortunately, the puzzles found throughout the game are incredibly simplistic, completely relying on the correct cube type for each situation.

Thankfully, EVEs levels provide a good break from the monotony of WALL-Es overly similar puzzles. As a more advanced robot capable of flight, EVE isnt restricted to ground-based levels. Instead, players will be tasked with flying through open environments, scanning for objects of interest or following other characters. Occasionally, EVE will also need to fly through long corridor segments, blasting through enemies and obstacles using her laser-shooting arm in a race against time. These levels are actually quite fun, and the flight controls work rather well with players steering by pointing the Wii-mote where they would like to fly.

The levels that have WALL-E and EVE working together play similarly to WALL-Es levels. The only major differences come in your ability to momentarily hover after a jump and use EVEs laser attack. Otherwise, these segments are just more of the same simplistic puzzle and platforming elements that have already been established. Although there is a definite lack of variety and difficulty in these and WALL-Es solo segments, initially they are somewhat entertaining and the controls are fairly solid.